Tag Archives: misinformation

Longer Lasting Buzz, Lower Cost

Business, Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , ,

It’s better than coffee. You’ll feel the positive effects much longer and it costs less than most of those single-serve pods you’ve been popping in the machine each morning. (Well, it’s going to depend on the brand, but if you drink three cups made from the cheapest pods, that’s still about a buck.) Plus, for only $1, you get the satisfying uplift for yourself and you are facilitating it for others who may not have that extra dollar to spend. It’s like a gift that keeps on paying itself forward while you indulge in its own decadent luxury of good vibes and luscious creaminess — without the caffeine crash and subsequent withdrawal headaches.

Of course, I’m talking about my subscriber feed on Patreon, full of delicious video extras and exclusive content to compliment the work I do here on the blog. Or, more specifically, to support the work I do here on the blog, and make it possible to continue. But the great thing is that the content available on my Patreon feed is so incredibly uplifting that it feels like a David “Avocado” Wolfe meme without any of the bad aftertaste of having ingested a wheelbarrow full of meritless detritus or the nasty run-off from the stream of living crazy that spills out under the corners of innocuous self-evidence.

Cheap wisdom on the label of a tea bag
More meaninglessness from America’s most trusted source of wisdom.

Sure, I might not offer many super-easily digestible single-frame tidbits of wisdom and beauty, but I strive for something other than a glazed-over sugar cube in the diet I offer. Plus, I’m actually a good storyteller, so even if you don’t like me personally, there is some entertainment value to be received here. It’s a good story, too; subscribers get more insight into my personal journey down this winding road of life. Okay, maybe it’s a sad story in some ways (spoiler: I die in the end), but it is populated with some particularly interesting and beautiful characters and serves up, as they say in the biz, plenty of laughs.

So what have you got to lose? A measly dollar? (Although, like Vegas, you are free to gamble on your enjoyment factor by seeing if it increases exponentially with larger wagers.) Give it a try. You can set it and forget it, keeping your access going month after month, and have the peace of mind knowing your dose of inspiring awesomeness is only a click away.

Thanks for signing up! It’s probably the best decision you will have made today. Plus, unlike a scalding-hot cup of McCoffee, it doesn’t burn when you spurt it out of your nose.

Bonuses that come with more subscribers:

The more subscribers I have, the more inclined I will be to edit out the dead air in my interviews. Getting your friends to sign up saves you time!

Cat videos! There, I said it.

Those nasty advertisements will stay away. All of this costs money, but I hated having ads on this site. Subscribers are the only reason that it remains ad-free. Whoo-hoo!

The more subscribers I have, the more likely I am to get truly interesting interviews posted. That isn’t to say my interviews aren’t already super-interesting (they are, they really are), but having more subscribers equates to a larger audience, which in turn opens the door to a wider range of celebrity guests and so-forth. (Celebrity, of course, being a relative term.)

But mostly, this is about messaging, and a dedicated base can help me to help others.

I’m trying to change the narrative on cancer.

By supporting me, you can be a part of this. I can’t do it alone, but together we can make a significant difference in the way society approaches the many issues surrounding cancer, from awareness and education to patient-caregiver relationships, from funding research to advocating for better care. I believe it’s a worthwhile mission. I hope that you do, too.

If this post resonates with you, please consider supporting my work through a monthly subscription to my feed on Patreon, or a one-time donation through PayPal. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler and many other fancy social sites or apps. Please share my posts to groups you are involved with on Reddit or Google+ or anywhere else that you feel it will help or enlighten or inspire another reader. (Sharing buttons are below the post!)

Thank you!

Lung Cancer Stigma and the Mainstream Press

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve mentioned the blog, Every Breath I Take, before, and spoken highly of its author, Lisa Goldman. Like myself, she was in her 40s when she was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer — although she was in her very early 40s, compared to my “mid-ish” — and, also like myself, she was a non-smoker. Her most recent post is an impassioned response to a special issue of Cure magazine, dedicated to lung cancer, that resonated as a major fail from the publication.

Read Lisa’s response here: http://lisa.ericgoldman.org/lung-cancer-facts/call-to-action-stop-promoting-lung-cancer-stigma-in-the-media

She also set up a petition to encourage the media to stop promoting the lung cancer stigma.

It is in the best interest of all patients to re-write the cancer narrative away from being a smoker’s disease, and away from being an automatic death sentence. While rates of the disease continue to climb and it remains the world’s most deadly cancer, clearly it is not the cancer that we have been sold on for so many years. Smoking is a stupid habit and greatly increases risk, and it was a useful tool to make lung cancer the whipping post for awareness. But the resulting stigma facing lung cancer patients is unwarranted.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

6 Simple Guidelines for Political Posts on Social Media

Politics, Reason, , , , , , , , , , ,

I just put about two weeks’ worth of coffee into my body, so please consider that as you read these proposed guidelines for political postings on social media.

I decided to put these down because I have noticed so many friends falling off toward these two camps: those who are tuning out completely due to political news fatigue and those who are spun up into a frenzy of posting and reposting and forwarding and generally being outraged all the time (or at least every fifteen minutes between the odd stress-reducing cute animal pic or positivity meme).

Follow this link to www.justbadforyou.com/blog
http://jeffreypoehlmann.rocks

The fact is, neither approach is helpful, and probably not healthy, either. We should all remain engaged, after all, or at least aware of what is going on around us. But we should not get lost in the process, nor should we be a part of the system of misinformation that has plagued our national politics for a long, long time. (That’s right, it is almost a national treasure, this “fake news” thing, and it goes right back to the beginning of our country’s history. That it appears to have reached some new apex in the past year is something of a natural progression, albeit a sad one. The challenge now is for the media to really keep it in check as it had done, more or less, for the past 120-ish years since the Hearst-induced Spanish-American War.)

6 Really Useful Social Media Guidelines

Continue reading 6 Simple Guidelines for Political Posts on Social Media →

Chemotherapy Horrors for Halloween and the Truth About Cancer

Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I take the commitment of a Halloween costume seriously. When I was a kid playing with stage makeup, I made myself look like I had been beaten so badly one Halloween that people forgot I was in costume and wanted to take me to the hospital. This year, I contemplated going as my cancer diagnosis. It seemed appropriate, after all, because I had the serendipity of getting my infusion on Halloween day this year. Just seemed perfect. But then I was thinking about it and, quite frankly, cancer just isn’t as scary as it used to be.

Just Give Me Candy
Because nothing delivers the scares like a guy in an orange shirt.

So I went with the most frightening costume I could come up with: a candy fiend. After all, little is as horrifying as someone coming off of a sugar binge. And my paunch is perfectly highlighted by the tight-fitting shirt that I have now worn for somewhere in the range of 6 to 10 Halloweens. (What can I say, some things are simply classically insidious.)

While a few years ago the idea of a giant tumor might have been amusing to me, and the notion of cancer in general seemed like a properly frightful subject, the story around these has changed for me. Hollywood, of course, still relies on cancer as it’s go-to meme for unsettling disease requirements, but then Hollywood is creatively lazy and uses the most basic shorthand it has for easy emotional manipulation.

The Truth About Cancer Continue reading Chemotherapy Horrors for Halloween and the Truth About Cancer →

WHO on EMF and EHS – Will Wi-Fi Cause Cancer?

Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In this modern world, there are plenty of reasons to be cautious. Digital devices almost seem to control our lives. They take up our time, luring us into the virtual world for entertainment, allowing us to be more productive by keeping us linked to our work 24/7, lulling us into a world of social networking that never requires us to physically interact with other humans. It is no wonder that authors of speculative fiction depict alternative worlds where we are literally plugged in.

In offices and homes across the developed world, it is more likely than not that there will be active Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections running all day long, often from multiple devices. In the past twenty years, as wireless connections have become more prevalent, concerns have been increasingly raised about their safety. The World Health Organization (WHO) took notice in the late 90s and began looking at all the evidence that was piling up from studies in many countries. Key to this awareness were the growing trend of Electromagnetic Hyper Sensitivity (EHS) and the concern that Electromagnetic Frequencies (EMF) could cause cancer.

Continue reading WHO on EMF and EHS – Will Wi-Fi Cause Cancer? →

The End of Life and How to Die

Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was going to write about working without wearing any pants, and how pantsless careers are sort of ideal, but instead I am going to offer some thoughts on death and dying.

Most of my mornings begin like this: the low-impact sport of serving up espresso drinks at my daughter’s school followed by a cool down period of errands on the way home. Sometimes, since this is Los Angeles and there is always a bit of traffic to contend with, I have time for a phone conversation or to catch up on my quota of NPR. The ride home also gives me time to ruminate on important issues and subjects for my blog. Sometimes a conversation sparks a new thought process, twists the direction I had planned on going or otherwise derails what would have been a perfectly good fluff piece. By way of example, I recently conversed with my mother about my father’s final days, thus running the train of intention for this post completely off the rails. Continue reading The End of Life and How to Die →

Support My Site in September and get My Book Free!

Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Staring at my budget with blurred eyes and a brain addled by a host of fun chemicals, I have to pinch myself and remind myself there are reasons that I chose the long game; there are reasons I passed over GoFundMe or GiveForward or any of the other single-goal fundraising websites my friends have used wisely to bridge specific financial gaps. I’ve seen those sites work super effectively, raising $3,000 or more in less than a week while targeting figures high enough to cover a host of potential costs ahead. For those friends, who would be “out of the woods” in a few months or so, where all their resources will be expended in a concentrated time, I think the outreach and the community reciprocity is amazing and a great testament to compassion within our social groups. But I’m not hard-wired that way, and my condition is not so neatly tied up in a closed time-frame.

Longer stretch, earning smaller frequent support goals

img_20151130_120725At this point, though it could change, I am on this merry-go-round every three weeks until I die — preferably quite a few years from now. And while I am still riding my chosen horse (a big, jet-black unicorn with a dangerously sharp silver horn, if you must know), I have a lot that I want to accomplish. I can’t manage a job for more than an hour or two most mornings, so I haven’t been traditionally employed for over two years. And yet, I have so much work to do! Like my book on living well with advanced cancer, getting on with life in spite of new limitations and finding the very best of ourselves along theway. Continue reading Support My Site in September and get My Book Free! →

Parabens, Fear and Junk Science

Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was going to title this post “Why I Love Parabens.” I had been reading up on them lately for a number of reasons, mostly surrounding a largely unfounded controversy surrounding a type of lip balm my daughter had been using. In the case of the lip balm, the “paraben-free” product was being accused of harboring mold with the implication being that this was a manufacturing defect. Examination of the claims revealed, however, that the mold was most likely the result of misuse or poor storage of the product which, due to the lack of effective preservatives, would be expected to mold if it was exposed to moisture and kept in the dark. This does, however, beg the question as to why a lip balm, of all things, would be sold without effective preservatives to protect against mold.

The answer, of course, is the unwarranted vilification of parabens. The natural cosmetics industry, and perhaps more accurately the Environmental Working Group and other activist organizations have been disseminating information about parabens for over a decade now, describing how they are endocrine disruptors and probably cause cancer. And this is where we get to the point of where science is occluded by hype, to the detriment of the consumer, the patient, the regular person on the street… Continue reading Parabens, Fear and Junk Science →

Guns or Cancer, Which is Better?

Cancer, Fear, Politics, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I don’t normally write about guns, but soon it will be gun violence awareness day, so it seems appropriate to throw my two cents in. After all, I like shooting guns, and I like talking about the law. Plus, you know, I have a terminal cancer diagnosis, so it just kind of makes sense.

I recently read two similar news stories about a pair of women who were killed mere days apart: one was deliberately shot by a stranger after leaving a rural vacation spot, and another was shot in the back when her toddler found a gun in the car while they were driving. Pure coincidence that both of those happened close together in Wisconsin, a state I used to live just over the border from, and happened within a week of each other with two mothers being shot and killed while driving with their children in the car. Otherwise, one was a presumably intentional (if random) murder by a horrible person, the other a very random (and presumably inadvertent) act by an innocent.

I’d love to say that the random shooting of mothers by their small children was a complete outlier, but it isn’t. Sadly, this sort of thing happens far too frequently, even among responsible gun-owners and pro-gun advocates — even while they are driving. Of course, not all toddlers who come across guns shoot their mothers. Sometimes, and I find this part deeply, deeply sad, they simply shoot themselves because a loaded gun was within reach. (For those of you who did not or could not click that last link, it details four cases where toddlers shot and killed themselves during the same week last month, in addition to five non-fatal accidental shootings by minors.)

And that is a clear example of what is wrong with current gun regulation. Continue reading Guns or Cancer, Which is Better? →

Myth of the Wellness Warrior, Part 2: Supplements, Denial and the Birthday Problem

Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve heard a lot lately about fears that a conspiracy is being perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industry and the government to keep natural cancer cures (and natural or holistic care in general) away from patients. It makes for a dramatic story with lots of Hollywood appeal, but examining the accusations leads down a more insidious path. To get there and understand the full extent of the problem, we need to step back and look at a range of sub-industries within the healthcare umbrella, what they provide and how they intertwine. We also need to understand some basics about statistics and probability that will clarify what some of the facts surrounding this conspiracy really mean. [And when you are done reading this, please continue on with the next chapter in this ongoing series.]

Supplementing the Truth

To begin with, let’s examine the hugely profitable supplements industry (mentioned in Forbes’ SportsMoney column as one of the fastest growing industries in the world). “Natural health” advocates and self-proclaimed gurus often have their own supplement brands which they sell as part of  treatment plans pushed on their web sites, or they have affiliate arrangements with a brand that they offer as being somehow superior to other brands. The supplement industry has grown from the notion that manufactured (or synthetic) vitamins could be used to supplement areas in the diet where a person was not able to consume adequate quantities to be healthy. In an indirect way, it can be traced back hundreds of years to the discovery that citrus fruit — particularly lemons — could prevent sailors from getting scurvy. It turned out that scurvy was a disease caused by a Vitamin C deficiency. By “supplementing” this vitamin, the disease could be avoided. Continue reading Myth of the Wellness Warrior, Part 2: Supplements, Denial and the Birthday Problem →